I’m kinda surprised you’re reading this

Let me start by saying I am totally fascinated that you found this blog post.  And I’m befuddled how or why you decided to click on the link to it that brought you here.

Perhaps you are a regular follower of the Gong Blog, as we call our regular blog here at Hodges. If you’re a friend of ours on Facebook or follow a Hodger on Twitter, this post would be hard to miss. We’re pretty good at blogging regularly and sharing some of our insights, mostly confined to the sphere of public relations and its evolving transformation (which includes this kind of thing). We appreciate your attention and indulging us these musings.

Then maybe you decided to share this post on your own Facebook feed, or hit “Like,” or you re-tweeted the link. You could be here because one of your own friends or followers did the same. And so on and so on (although I doubt it).

I think there are some of you out there that have set up Google Alerts, and so the fact that I’ve shamelessly mentioned Miley Cyrus or Peyton Manning or anyone with the last name Kardashian has obediently shot this post into your inbox. Maybe your Google Alerts are of a more serious vein, and so my references to the Kennedy assassination, the U.S. unemployment rate or Middle East peace talks put these key words in front of you before you realize that this blog has nothing to do with your interests and is only wasting your time. Sorry.

I don’t blog often myself, and the last time I opined empathetically on what the Carnival Cruise PR team was going through in the wake of stranding their passengers for several days without working toilets. (Here’s a link to it here.)

In the days following that post, I got a Facebook message from my eighth cousin, a guy from New Jersey I have never met, never heard of and never knew existed. He wrote inquiring what line of Dare’s I had descended from, something I was always curious about but hadn’t a clue. After a polite exchange over the days to follow, Cousin David provided me with a complete family history, dating back to when sea captain William Dare landed his ship on the shores of New Jersey in 1680. (That’s the downside – I discovered I am from New Jersey.)

The point is, he found me, not likely because he cared a whit about what I had to say about Carnival, but because there was some relevance to who I was.

Search engines and social media platforms have clearly enhanced the interconnectedness of us all, so much so that we can’t be surprised when an eighth cousin shows up in your inbox. What we know here is that when we post a blog, our site traffic goes way up.

Deep down I know how you might have found me. But stay tuned for part 2 of this post. I’ll share the analytics of who you are and where you came from. Who knows, we could be related.

(Image by Matt Estreich, @MattNBC12)